Name Changes: John Drew Theater, Theodore Roosevelt County Park & More

Last week, the management of Guild Hall in East Hampton released the schedule for the grand reopening of the John Drew Theater, named for one of the great actors of the early 20th century who spent his summers in East Hampton.

To the shock of many, the John Drew Theater has been renamed. It is now called the Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan Theater. So when you go to the John Drew Theater, you will instead find yourself in a theater that looks like the John Drew but has been renamed for the donation made by the wealthy, but little-known, Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan family. Their largess made it possible to refurbish the theater in beautiful fashion during the time it was closed.

The board of this cultural center never officially announced that there would be a name change. Instead, it looks like they tried to sneak it in. It just appears as the name of the theater in the schedule of upcoming events there in that theater.

John Drew’s fame extended far beyond the stage where he played opposite Ada Rehan and, later, fellow veteran star Leslie Carter. His Broadway show with Carter, called The Circle, was later made into a silent film by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) director Frank Borzage. And Drew, after his acting career ended, became heavily involved in the New York theater scene. He was voted lifetime president of New York City’s theatrical club The Players. He was also, in real life, the wise old uncle to John and Lionel Barrymore, movie stars of the 1930s and ’40s.

Although the general public might be shocked by the wiping out of an East Hampton iconic figure’s memorial, there are, I am sad to say, many other cultural institutions which will soon bear new names, always in honor of large donors, or in what is now about to happen, one amazing new donor family: The Claustrophobics.

Here are the changes, kept secret until now, that will happen in time for the Fourth of July weekend. Remember: You read it first in Dan’s Papers.

But first, let me introduce the Claustrophobics to you. There are many of them, 14, who are all the offspring of the recently deceased patriarch of the Claustrophobics family, Giuseppi Claustrophobic. In his will, he divided up his $63-billion fortune evenly among his 14 children and their spouses, with the provision that each of them donate half of their fortunes to 14 different cultural institutions in the Hamptons.

The Montauk Point Lighthouse, after receiving their billions last week, is to be renamed the Fred and Melissa Claustrophobic Lighthouse. John Steinbeck Waterfront Park in Sag Harbor, honoring the Nobel Prize–winning novelist who lived in that town, is to be renamed Hattie and Giuseppi Claustrophobic Park. Coopers Beach in Southampton will next week be renamed the Fileppa and Oscar Claustrophobic Beach. Other changes in Southampton will be the Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, now renamed to become the Gladys and Arnold Claustropobic Hospital, and Howell House, so named for one of the founders of that town, which will become the Beatrice and Lewis Claustrophobic House. Meanwhile in East Hampton, the Pollock-Krasner House, the home where Jackson Pollock did his incredible drip paintings, will be renamed the Eugene and Loretta Claustrophobic House.

Many of you readers may not have heard of the extraordinary Claustrophobic family. But you may have heard of the Duchy of Claustrophobia, a newly formed city-state in Bulgaria that became independent after the donations made by Giuseppi Claustrophobic there. Earlier, Giuseppi made his fortune in the car wash business. This was long before car washes came into existence, and that’s because Giuseppi, as a young man (before he married his four wives) understood the need for them. He designed, patented and made his money franchising out car wash businesses around the world. It filled a great need. And Giuseppi’s patent, produced and approved in Bulgaria in 1932, completely and accurately described the best way to wash cars, by squirting and buffing cars as they pass upon a moving belt through car wash buildings of his exceptional design. Car washes everywhere, to this day, continue to have to pay the Claustrophobic heirs one euro for every car they wash. It’s the law.

How Giuseppi became fascinated with the Hamptons is not known. And apparently, we will never know. He’s no longer with us. What we do know, however, is that with his four wives he produced and raised his 14 children with great care, encouraging all their different talents and abilities, and though none of them ever came to live or visit the Hamptons as far as we know, it’s possible that in some way this took place. So maybe that’s it.

Giuseppi was a great patron of the arts, at first just in Bulgaria, then in the Duchy he founded (whose application to join the European Union is pending) and then, finally, here in America where, based in Dingbat, Nevada, he apparently became enamored somehow with our splendid resort. Who knows? Nobody knows.

You will soon be hearing a lot more from the Claustrophobic family. They are extraordinary people — all of them. And they are all falling all over themselves to do Giuseppi’s bidding before time runs out, whenever that is.

Also up for grabs, we are told, is Miss Amelia’s Cottage in Amagansett, the Theodore Roosevelt County Park in Montauk which was recently renamed Montauk County Park, thereby losing the name of that dashing colonel who fought in the Spanish-American War, spent time in Montauk and became president of what until now continues to be called the United States of America.

Brenda and Moses Claustrophobic say that there may be a big change about what the United States will be called in the coming days.

Martin Frobisher, of the firm Dewey, Cheatem and Howe, has explained it all. “The Claustrophobics are following in the footsteps of the Rico and Gretchen Citi family, the recipient of the great eggplant fortune, whose largess resulted in the tearing down of Shea Stadium — named after politically powerful lawyer William Shea — to replace it with Citi Field for the beloved New York Mets,” he said. “And then, of course, we have the people who got the tunnels named after them, the Holland, East River and Lincoln families, Wall Street billionaires all, at least until the Crash of ’29. But that was long after.

“This is nothing new. Get over it.”